


W.I.T.C.H. Apocalypse

by Valentine20xx



Series: W.I.T.C.H.E.S. [1]
Category: W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/F, Hidden Pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-28 22:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20071804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentine20xx/pseuds/Valentine20xx
Summary: It's been four years since the girls began as W.I.T.CH, and they're celebrating the birthday of Elyon. However, shortly after that, a strange force begins feeding off the magic of various worlds, consuming the worlds themselves in the process.Can W.I.T.C.H. figure out what is happening, or a way to stop it? Or is this the end of everything?





	W.I.T.C.H. Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Some aspects of this story will not make sense, and other things may seem either odd or incorrect. I even guarantee that a lot of things that appear in this story will appear again, despite what happened to them. I will state that anything that does seem off-kilter… I am notorious for hiding things about my stories and lying by omission. So maybe I’m doing that again?

It was the day of Elyon's birthday. That wasn't the problem. It was that she'd been invited to Will's house to help her organise a party for her. She wondered to herself how she found out. It was information she hadn’t told anyone, especially the Guardians. She’d even handed out the wrong information two or three times, just to keep them from asking. But Will somehow _knew, _and here she was, in a very nice hip-hugger jeans and jacket combination, setting up for it.   
‘_Happy Sweet Sixteenth, Elyon!’_ She read off the banner Will was hanging, noticing the jacket had text on the back, which suggested it wasn’t one she’d just bought. Not many jackets read, ‘_Where I Am, There’s Always A Way!’ _surrounding the symbol for Quintessence.  
“Where there’s a Will, there’s a way...” She muttered, “Cute. Very cute. Clearly a Guardian Present,”  
Guardian Presents were a private custom between the five of them, which almost always were things that seemed like something friends would get each other, but, when you knew about their powers, had a whole different meaning. The jacket was a thinly veiled reference, for example, to the fact Will was the central part of most of their strategies, being the source of their powers. When Will walked over, she noticed she was wearing a gold charm necklace, with the symbols for the Guardians on it, in a very specific order, the central part having a noticeable gap, roughly the size of the Heart of Kandrakar, the charms lopsided as a result, and she wondered quietly how much of the outfit was custom-made.  
“So, How did you find out one of Elyon’s biggest secrets? The birthday on file is incorrect, I should know, Elyon told me the real date a few years back,” Cornelia half-lied. She grew up with Elyon nearby, so knew her well.  
“I asked her, she told me as well. No-one thinks to ask her except us two,” Will stated, “Over why… She tries to do Guardian Presents herself, so I asked her when her birthday is so we could potentially do the opposite...”  
Cornelia nodded. It was logical. A good example of how the Guardian Present exchange went was that Hay-Lin got her a slightly abused bonsai tree, which was returned a couple of months later, fixed up, as part of Hay-Lin's Guardian Presents. Cornelia knew it wasn't the same tree every time, having got very good at identifying the source of any off-cutting or flower bunch. Caleb hadn't lasted long when she passively worked out he got the bunch of roses from one of the cheaper florists, and wrapped it in paper to resemble one from the upmarket ones.

When the other guardians arrived a short time later, comments about the jacket and where it came from, always brushed off, narrowed it down to Elyon getting it her, which was interesting. Will admitted to Cornelia in passing that the charms and jacket had been one of the rare times she'd managed to do so, and implied regular contact.  
“Just thinking… This can’t last forever...” Will mused, an oddly melancholy thought, “Unless we were to move in with each other, and that would bring too much attention...”  
Cornelia nodded, the other Guardians looking just as pensive. They already got a lot of pointed questions about visiting each other’s houses, even though they did it on rotation, from those who didn’t know they were a group of magical warriors. It was one of several problems they had, never mind the fact they lived a good distance apart, so emergency calls were rarely neatly dealt with.  
“Almost want to have us move to Japan or China...” Hay-Lin offered, “You declare yourself a mystic in the Far East, you get a temple to live in...”  
“You watch too much Sailor Moon,” Will offered, and they chuckled at the thought, although it was clear more than one of them was considering it. No-one noticed the Heart Of Kandrakar gain a crack in it, as an uneasy silence hung over them.

After the party, before she headed back to Metamoor, Cornelia sat down with her.  
“So, Why are you in touch with Will?” Cornelia asked.  
“I’d almost think you were jealous...” Elyon replied, “And she asked the right questions. We discussed how Kandrakar seems to only demand, never truly give, How this is the first time we've truly had time to ourselves, that they expect us to stand as their vanguard when things go wrong...”  
Cornelia sighed. Both Will and Elyon had brought up some heavy topics for the Guardians.  
“Why does Will’s charm necklace not have her symbol in the middle?” Cornelia asked.  
“The middle is where her Heart is meant to be clipped,” Elyon stated, “And she unclips the last charm sometimes, that’s why it’s lopsided...”  
She then took out a picture, showing Will in the same jacket and necklace, and it had _six_ charms on it, the sixth a symbol she didn’t recognise. Imagining the Heart Of Kandrakar in the middle, the whole purpose of the necklace was made very apparent. It was outright showing off her status as the leader of W.I.T.C.H.  
“It’s not totally a charm necklace, or it would just be done as a bracelet,” Elyon stated, taking out a charm bracelet with Cornelia’s symbol hanging from it, “Like so. This is your one,”  
She got a set of three boxes out. “Sorry I didn’t give them out earlier, I don’t exactly spend long enough in the neighbourhood...” Elyon stated, her sleeve shifting, Cornelia swearing she saw one of the bracelets.

It wasn't until a few weeks later before the bracelets were handed out, Will having replaced the charm necklace version with one that only had four charms on it.  
"We give each other cheap trinkets... She spends a small fortune on hand-crafted jewellery..." Hay-Lin observed.  
"She's also the queen of one of our two sponsors. Anyway, they're not just jewellery..." Will began, then went to her own wrist, pressing part of the pattern, her words silenced, pressing it again a few minutes later, "We have a problem,"  
"What kind of problem?" The others asked.  
"Kandrakar just vanished," Will stated, "I don't know exactly why, only that it's no longer there..."  
Cornelia nodded along with the others, but was curious about one thing. She obviously was telling them that they had communication features, but who was it who called _them_ to tell her that Kandrakar just vanished?

"Yes, I've lost touch with Kandrakar," Yan-Lin stated when they arrived at the restaurant, "Your powers should work... for now, but don't rely on them!"  
"What exactly has happened to..." Hay-Lin began.  
"Hell if I know!" Yan-Lin stated, "How about asking whoever gave Will the information?"  
"If what's happening is right, they're having their own problems..." Will stated. Yan-Lin then scowled as every single one of the guardian's wrists chirped at the same time as a bell went off, Will going to her wrist.  
"Hello, This is Earth," Will stated, her tone changing to a clipped, professional tone.  
"This is Orube. Something is happening to Balisade. I've been trying to call anywhere with active magical communications for the past hour..." Her wrist crackled, followed by a scream, "By the..."  
Will then poked at several points on her wrist, calling 'Orube!' repeatedly, only to throw up her arms a short time later. "Cross Balisade off..." She declared, "And it's not going to matter about people hearing anything..."  
She then walked off, leaving the Guardians looking confused. Why would she be so resigned over their secret being likely to be out.  
"What exactly happened there?" Hay-Lin asked.  
"Elyon give you all magical communicators. Someone sent a message to every magical communicator she could, hoping we'd get the message..." Yan-Lin stated, "Oh, we got the message alright..."  
She then went to a box in one corner of the room, where the chime had come from and discreetly smashed the contents, before going into the back and there being a sound of something else being broken.  
"I think that closed it..." Hay-Lin heard Yan-Lin mutter as they left. She then thought about the fact Yan-Lin was part of Kandrakar's congregation, and guessed she'd just smashed a centuries old method for going to and from Kandrakar, and not just because the place wasn't there any more...

It was an annoyed Elyon who woke up in her room, looking round the empty room and sighing. It was so quiet, so oppressive. Why she was thinking about how her bed felt far too big for her on her own? It wasn’t the kind of subject someone should be thinking about this early in the morning. It was barely dawn for goodness sakes!  
“Must look into a pet. Like a puppy. Yes, definitely a puppy. Not a frog. They already have plenty of frogs in their...” Elyon began to muse, then paused, shaking her head. Where had that thought come from? And who was she thinking about? She sighed, going for a shower. Five minutes later, she mentally considered telling the royal plumber they were fired, before she used a small amount of touch-up make-up to hide how she’d not slept well.  
“A queen does not look ‘tired’. She is never ‘tired’. It is not dignified...” popped into her head, and she sighed. She had no idea where that had come from, but she remembered hearing the advice, just couldn’t quite remember when from. She was getting really annoyed with this odd half-remembered set of thoughts, jumbled, confusing. Instead, she focused on outside, where a large gathering had begun. That wasn’t good. They never were. The last one had been engineered by Phobos, and she _knew_ how well that one turned out!  
Instead of thinking about that, She counted to ten under her breath as she prepared to look her best for the advisor who was coming, a calming sensation flowing over her. She reached 8 before the doors swung open, the advisor of the day carrying some kind of bag that was squirming. This was clearly bad. Squirming bags didn’t get presented to Queens. Especially when it began to make pained braying sounds.  
“What word do you bring me of the unrest outside?” She asked sternly, keeping up her facade of a dignified ruler. What she really was doing was panicking about what the hell was going on, and felt a hard object begin to form in her hand.  
“My… My lady… There is some… something wrong...” The woman fumbled as she spoke, Elyon frowning. It had gone up from ‘The taxes are 1% over what they’ll pay’, way past ‘Your brother is organizing a coup’ and into uncharted territory. Dignity be damned, this was no time for that. The woman dropped the bag on the floor as her composure collapsed. Whatever was in it terrified her. As one of the animals, vaguely reminiscent of a deer, native to the nearby meadows came out, initially, she thought it was just a phobia...  
...except it was bleating in terror, and, as it came most of the way out, and she saw it’s physical structure unravelling behind it. She was thankful she had not had time to call for her breakfast as her dignity failed completely, and she ended up dry-heaving into a bin, and probably would be unable to eat anything for another hour or so, as the last bleats it would ever make echoed and faded from the room, to be forgotten by almost everyone, whatever had been forming in her hand breaking up unused.  
“Anything caught by this enchantment has not long for this world… If they are lucky, they may last for a couple of hours...” The adviser stated, her demeanour returning to normal, “I bore witness to a particularly proud… former… knight of your service who, when caught by this strange affliction, stubbornly fought to last long enough to raise the alarm at the barracks. She vanished midway through organizing the evacuation plans. Literally. We cannot locate their next of kin, however. The location given for their home no longer is reachable...”  
Elyon winced. She didn’t want to think of being caught in such a terrible event, and motioned for the adviser to follow her. Something told her that whatever she was doing when she began to worry about what was happening was ill-advised, and let the desire dissipate, losing herself in being Queen Elyon of Meridian.  
“I would like the name of this noble warrior, for… posthumously promoting them as one of the members of my royal guard forces,” Elyon stated, “If they are restored, they will be given the position as fits such a loyal warrior… Also, I would like your name as well, for an award to be minted in your honour, for what you did in advising me before I was caught in this affliction...”

The names were given and she wrote them down, not trusting anyone else with them, as they headed towards the nearest exit, Elyon worried as she noticed the surreal imagery of corridors hanging in mid-air, an oppressive feeling of nothingness hanging over the gaps, like as if you’d cease to be if you fell out of the corridor. As she crossed a corridor that began melting away as soon as she had got through, one of her other advisors cut her off, the name being exchanged rapidly. She had a feeling they were about to earn awards for their actions.  
“You… You are being priority evacuated...” The advisor stated, their arm positioned oddly, “There… There is no other way out of the palace at this time...”  
Elyon didn’t need to know why they were so sure of the lack of exits. She could see that they were hiding their imminent death from her. They headed for the portal room that had been designated, the decay accelerating around the portal room. She then knew why something told her NOT to summon whatever she’d been summoning. The decay was attracted to magic.  
“The portal, It’s agitating it!” Elyon screamed.  
“Do not forget us, Lady Elyon! Do not forget those who saved all they- Aaahhh!” She heard as the portal teleported her to the nearest safe location. She held no illusions about the three people burned into her memory. They, and probably most of the population of Metamoor, were all gone, consumed by the mysterious force that had eaten away at her world...

An untold distance away, Will Vandom snapped awake, breathing heavily. She attributed her problem sleeping to her bed being uncomfortable due to a cold spot. Nothing to do with the horrid nightmare she’d just had. Not one bit. Meridian hadn’t just been consumed by an anti-magic force. Why did it have to happen now of all times?  
“A bad dream, my bed doesn’t feel right...” Will sighed, “This is going to be one of those days… Going to probably even get a pop quiz on something I’ve not fully revised on...”  
She got out her jacket and jeans, pulling on her boots, a calming sensation flowing over her. She wouldn’t be showing her discomfort to anyone. When she met Taranee outside to head for school, Taranee looked at her worriedly.  
“OK, What’s with the bad vibes?” Taranee asked, “You look terrible, and I don’t mean physically. You look the bomb physically, always do, don’t know how you manage to look so good even on your bad days... but, If you were Irma, You’d be lugging round one hell of a rainstorm...”  
“Just a really creepy feeling… Like today is full of bad vibes...” Will offered, giving a slightly crooked smile at Taranee’s joke about their elemental powers. Both of them felt creeped out even more by the fact over a quarter of the students were fashionably late and a worrying amount of the teachers, with the principal reassuring them that there was plenty of faculty to handle the workload, and there was likely something holding up a large chunk of the school’s populace, Will slightly worried about one missing teacher in particular.

When they met for lunch, only for their lunch break seem to not be ending, they decided to use the time to discuss what they thought was going on.  
“This is not helping me feel like my day is not going to be terrible...” Will grumbled, her mood having darkened over the morning, “So, Any ideas of what’s causing, well… All of this?”  
“What do you mean?” Cornelia tried, “Maybe it’s some kind of stomach bug going round?”  
“That usually happens after lunch break...” Taranee quipped, a brief chuckle going round the group.  
“I did some digging...” Irma stated, “Almost everyone who didn’t come in lives very near one of the portals...”  
“That’s not something you can normally check...” Hay-Lin offered, “You sure of that?”  
“It’s easier to find portals when you keep them in your address book...” Irma quipped, “One of the early ones was easy, since...”  
“Yes, I know that one very well...” Will stated, as she tapped Elyon’s old address pointedly, “We all do.”  
“Ahem, yes, But checking a map of the area, everyone who is missing is in the vicinity of a portal… This grouping however...” Irma offered.  
“Hmm… Yes, there’s a portal there,” Will stated, “Just normally is never used… Keep hold of the address.”  
She then scrawled an address on a piece of paper, handing it to Irma, who blinked, before adding it to the list, checking it against the map, and nodding. That was likely the missing link in the pattern.  
“OK, That explains what caused the people who went missing at the _start_ of the day...” Hay-Lin observed, wondering why Will had the address of an _unlisted_ portal, “But have you noticed how the classes have been getting smaller and smaller?”  
“OK, That completely throws my calculations out of the window...” Irma sighed, Will grabbing the stack of diagrams and ‘helpfully’ tossing the worthless information out of an open window, “Literally, thank you, Will...”  
“Yes, and when you get them back later, we’ll call it even.” Will stated simply, Cornelia walking over.  
“Officially, the remaining teachers left over an hour ago to go look for the missing students, and will be back to finish the classes,” Cornelia offered, “Unofficially, School’s out, perhaps forever...”  
“So, Will, Let’s power up and go investigate...” Taranee stated, for Will to shake her head.  
“NO!… We do it without magic, We have to do all of this without magic,” Will stated firmly, “Even latent magic,”  
“OK, Don’t know why you’d say that, but you’re the one with all the power...” Hay-Lin shrugged.  
“Keep telling yourself that. One day, you’ll get a painful reminder… and then, you’ll remember I’m not...” Will stated, before they headed out of the school.

When they arrived at the turn for the street where Elyon's house should have been, they stopped, just short of an oddly smooth slice taken out of the landscape, almost the entire neighborhood for over a mile seemingly removed from the area, with the sewage pipes somehow not draining into the hole.  
"What the..." All five of them mouthed, at the impossible hole. They then noticed the hole was widening, and moved away rapidly.  
"Why do I have this very worrying feeling that we'll find similar gaps in the landscape at the other locations?" Hay-Lin stated, "And I think Will has the right idea... What are the portals? Active magic that pretty much can't just 'turn off'..."  
"And everywhere with a portal, even 'dormant', has just been swallowed up, and anyone who was in that area..." Will continued, and they looked very worried.  
“Damn… Hay-Lin, remember how you suggested we _transform_ and head off?” Irma stated, “Whatever this is, it would leech off us as the biggest pile of magic in the area...”  
Hay-Lin fell to her knees in horror, as she realised that Will had the right idea. She’d probably noticed the pattern already, and was letting them figure it out for themselves, and she would have probably killed everyone at the school, possibly even killed them all just by going with the stock reaction.  
“I just… just wi… just wish to reassure you… This isn’t what I meant...” Will stated, her voice unsteady, as she stated, staring into space, “Can you hear a pounding sound?… It’s distract-”  
Will then collapsed, falling to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, an object, pitted and cracked, falling from her hand as she folded limply, Hay-Lin picking it up. A few hours later, they arrived at Will’s house, the encroaching voids having reduced down.  
“OK, Whatever happened, it’s reversed… Well, we passed by one of the areas on the way here, and it wasn’t affected, but everyone seemed confused...” Taranee muttered as they arrived at Will’s house, Hay-Lin giving a gasp at what tumbled from Will’s hand… The Heart Of Kandrakar, in severe threat of fracturing completely.

****Once Will was laid out on the couch, they took stock of their situation.  
“I think the effect was only temporarily reversed, not stopped completely,” Hay-Lin muttered, going to the phone and trying one of the numbers, “And maybe not even completely...”  
“What do you mean?” Cornelia asked.  
“I tried to call Will’s mother, but it couldn’t find any phone...” Hay-Lin explained.  
“This feels like that Stephen King story… The Langoliers?” Irma offered, “Except that was a dead world, a past world, that was being destroyed to make way for the new. And only a few people were there. Not like this...”  
As they tried to call various phone numbers, and getting several degrees of nothing, they abruptly heard a knock at the door. Hoping it was Will’s mother, they were surprised to see Elyon, who was looking distraught.  
“You do not want to know how hard it is to navigate Heatherfield without crashing into… You likely know what...” Elyon offered, “Whatever was swallowing up Heatherfield, It erased Metamoor in a single morning. I don’t know why, but I managed to come out of it without any side-effects...”  
Will then walked in, wiping something off her hands as she looked towards Elyon. “So, I didn’t just dream that...” Will sighed, looking towards the others, “Bad dream, threw my whole mood off, Final hours of Metamoor...”  
“How do we know Elyon didn’t cause all this fleeing?” Irma snapped, “It seemed to happen only after she arrived...”  
“No, she arrived shortly after school began, and already the portals were useless… If she came her usual way, she’d have been right in the middle of it. Hell, she used neither of the portals she usually did, or she’d have been meeting us by lunchtime,” Will mused, “Still, I saw what happened with Metamoor. All the portals blew open, and the landscape around them ceased to exist… Sound familiar?”  
They all nodded. They’d seen what had been happening with Heatherfield.  
“Evacuation plans would have to rely on non-permanent portals, and anyone who opened those up wouldn’t last five minutes… and the site would last about ten...” Will continued.  
“I only managed to escape since both the entrance and exit portal are pretty much punched through the Veil in pre-determined weak spots...” Elyon continued, “Nothing magical there till you light them up. Of course, due to that, you can’t use a location with a pre-existing portal within...”  
“One square kilometre,” Will supplied, “And five if the portal is broadcasting… Damn interference...”  
“Did you say five square kilometres?” Irma stated, looking at her recovered notes, telling the other members of WITCH, “All the people who went missing in the morning were within a square kilometre of the portals… By the afternoon, if I’m right, it was five,”  
“As I was saying, You activate a set of runes which punches a hole in the Veil to your destination...” Elyon finished, “It’s crude, potentially imprecise, which is why it isn’t used often, and likely saved me...”  
“Which is why the locations with portals just vanished… Likely the magic we have, being Guardians, caused lesser examples of the effect...” Taranee declared, frowning suddenly, “Dammit… Of all the times...”  
“Look, we have somewhere to live in, despite where one of the portals is,” Will offered enigmatically, “I think we all need to sleep...”  
“You have had enough sleep, Wilhemina Vandom!” Elyon snapped, “Or was that coma you were in when I arrived not restful?”  
“I didn’t get a very good wake-up call this morning, Elly!” Will snapped back, “I’ll use… my mother’s bed if I need to, Elly, You already know where to go. Everyone else, I THINK your homes are mostly well away from portals, try to call home. Hay Lin, don’t even try. Even with her smashing her communicator, Yan Lin has so much active magic around her, and you can't just break a portal...”  
Hay-Lin winced. Yes, it was unlikely she’d be able to answer. She’d have got wiped out by however she travelled to Kandrakar.  
“Let them know you’re crashing here, then get some sleep...” Will finished, “See you in a few hours.”

Will then headed upstairs, Elyon following a few seconds later, the other Guardians looking confused.  
“Ever had a time where you really feel like you were listening to a phone conversation, even though you could hear both sides?” Cornelia offered, as Hay-Lin pulled a tangle of gold filgree on a chain out of a bin Will had been standing near the whole time.  
“Well, I know one thing… Will did a good job of distracting us from the fact the Heart Of Kandrakar was what she had been cleaning off her hands...” Hay-Lin offered, “Still, Yes, something about that entire ‘conversation’ threw me...”  
“Which part? The part where Will off-handedly gave the last bit of information about why people vanished from a certain...” Taranee began, then, looking towards Irma, “That unlisted portal, the one Will gave you the address for...”  
“It’s a couple of blocks away, about five minutes...” Irma started, then frowned, “That’s what she meant… This house shouldn’t be here, it’s well within even the reduced radius, and likely why she suspected Elyon would be talking to us earlier...”  
“Anyway, How would she know the size of the magical footprint of a portal…” Taranee continued, holding up her hand to halt the inevitable question, “Except for the fact she has one practically in her back yard… Almost want to get on the roof, look for the address and see if there’s anything there...”  
“We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt there...” Hay-Lin offered, “Now, Will and Elyon pretty much were the only people talking, and they carried the conversation without trouble. Now, tell me this… How loudly was Elyon talking when she began her story?”  
“Yeah, That’s what was nagging at me too… It felt rehearsed, like they’d known what the other was thinking a line ahead,” Cornelia offered, “But this isn’t something you can rehearse for, and she couldn’t have predicted everything… Hell, You only made your notes today, and they integrated your comments seamlessly,”  
“Something else… How they referred to each other...” Irma added, “Elyon used Will’s full name, but almost no-one uses Wilhemina to refer to her, except her mother. She’s never HEARD Will’s first name, and only _might_ have heard Will’s last name.”  
“And the way she replied with Elly, it was a pet name in all ways,” Taranee finished, as Hay-Lin crept upstairs, “She pretty much acted like Elyon has been sleeping over before...”  
“The ‘usual place’? Will’s bedroom. She’s asleep in there in a set of Will’s spare pyjamas, and Will, as expected, is asleep in her mother’s bedroom,” Hay-Lin told them when she came down, “Why would Elyon consider Will’s bedroom where she sleeps over?”  
Leaving the enigma for now, sleeping arrangements were made and uneasy sleep gained as, despite Will’s assurances one of them might find their parents home, the calls home still got dead air. It was worse than dealing with whatever the Langoliers were. At least, with them, the world was deserted _before_ everything started disappearing.

When Will woke up that morning, even if it didn’t feel like it, she didn’t look exactly very good, Elyon supporting her, and she quickly sat down, pointing to the TV for it to turn on to the Emergency Broadcast System.  
‘_Due to recent strange incidents, It is highly recommended that anyone stay indoors for the foreseeable future. The unknown sinkhole-like phenomena...’_ The announcer stated, the TV shutting off again as Will winced noticeably, everyone looking her way.  
“It’s nothing… I’ll be fine...” She stated, “Before you ask, no, I didn’t stage the EBS. Was hard enough just doing that… Figured out the electricity and phone lines intersected the phenomena...”  
‘Too much effort?’ Hay-Lin mouthed to the others. Taranee walked out, Elyon following her, noticing her swearing as she snapped her wrist in a slightly practised motion.  
“You are right to test that, Taranee...” Elyon stated, “But it won’t do anything. Meet me later, and I’ll explain everything that I know...”

A short time later, after Will had waved them off to go back to bed, Elyon visibly wincing at the amount of time she spent sleeping, the rest of the Guardians met in the main room.  
“I am lucky, being the Queen of Meridian, in that I don’t need to use any of my latent powers for anything...” Elyon offered, sighing, “Meanwhile, Will had to expend what spare energy she built up with what rest she got just to get the TV working long enough to confirm the situation is how it is...”  
“I almost did my wrist in trying to get even a spark from my own powers...” Taranee continued, “We’re practically running on fumes...”  
“So, what exactly is going on?” Cornelia asked, “You’ve not been talking to me, but originally, we were the closest of friends… Meanwhile, you hold a conversation with Will over subjects that I didn’t even know Will had even a vague understanding of!”  
“There was… I’d consider it a paradigm shift,” Elyon continued, “I’m sorry, Cornelia, but, when things have resolved, if what I feel is right, we’ll no longer be friends in the same way… I woke up yesterday morning with memories that weren’t familiar, and spent all of yesterday getting them organized...”  
“Which is why Will seems to know things that really she shouldn’t?” Hay-Lin offered, Elyon nodding.  
“Because she got the same influx of memories, but hides it better...” Elyon stated, sighing as she offered, “It hurts to see Will like this, acting like someone several times her age...”  
“Hell, She might look like a million bucks, but you look at her properly...” Taranee stated, “She’s been hiding a lot from us about the last 32 hours...”  
“I bet you noticed her attempting to be discreet when she binned the former Heart of Kandrakar...” Elyon offered, moving aside abruptly.  
“What exactly happened to it?” Hay-Lin pressed, only to hear the door opening.  
“The magic sustaining it was gone, possibly due to Kandrakar disappearing a short time ago like Metamoor did... I was shepherding the power since,” Will stated, wearing what seemed to be a slightly different version of the Heart hanging from her neck, with her full set of charms, her tiredness visibly having vanished, “This is something important, and I need you to remember everything I ask of you...”  
She looked towards Elyon, who took her hand as she guided her to the chair next to her, before she continued.  
“Sometime in the… future, I will not be there, this...” Will stated, holding up the amulet round her neck, “...won’t be around. This time, I’ll talk you through it, but when this happens again, me and Elyon won’t be here… You’ll need to find it yourself… You already have the clues,”  
She then motioned for them to sit with her in a circle, sat in the classic meditation position, Will and Elyon sat facing each other.  
“Now, look inside you, look for that spark of magic that you had long before the Heart of Kandrakar came into our lives, that allowed you to do things like magic pop quizzes and other minor tricks...” Will stated, her voice seeming to echo slightly. Each of the Guardians remembered the magic they had, that they used long before that fateful Halloween, falling into themselves, taking the hand of the person next to them as they found it, a familiar, warm sensation, coming out of it holding their own Heart, both similar and different to the one they knew, the colour and ornamentation different in each case.  
“Don’t go using them… this time...” Will stated, as they noticed Elyon had a similar amulet herself, which she quickly hid, but they had already seen it, and couldn’t exactly cover for it.  
“Why has Elyon got one?” Hay-Lin pressed.  
“This is my own power, like those Hearts are your powers...” Elyon stated, pointing to Irma, then continuing down the row, “Water, Fire, Earth, Air… Your elements, crystallised and unfiltered,”  
“The reason she has a Heart at all is central to this paradigm shift. What we are going to discuss with you will be engraved into your Heart, will be recalled as if from a vivid dream when the time comes...” Will stated, every bit the leader they knew.  
“To begin, I have a prophecy for you,” Elyon stated, allowing them to see her own gem was faded, but visibly brighter than the ones of the Guardians, “A Heart Will Begin, A Heart Will End, Guardians United, From Beginning To End...”  
“Bad translation, but it works...” Will muttered, before saying, “Time has unravelled, we’re pretty much in the middle of the end of the world… When it stitches back together, most of this will be forgotten, and the shift will be complete… Which is why we need to do this discussion…”  
“Will’s likely the Heart to begin, well, without her, we’d never even be Guardians… Oh my.” Hay-Lin stated, “That’s a mighty big paradigm shift… W.I.T.C.H.E.”  
“Yes. In the new timeline, I will be the sixth Guardian... There is a seventh. Yes, We'll see about her using a first name beginning with S. She looks more like she's from Japan anyway,” Elyon stated, “But that is not quite what the prophecy means...”  
“So, What use is such a big revelation at the end of the world?” Taranee offered, “Our magic is almost spent, our world is draining into some kind of null magic void...”  
Elyon then seemed to form something in her hands, the glow of her gem going darker for a moment, Will sighing as she knew what she was doing, taking what she’d made.  
“As I said, Elyon didn’t quite get it right...” Will stated, as she put a familiar crown on Elyon’s head, “A Heart Will Begin, A Heart Shall End...”  
“A Heart Will Begin, A Heart Shall End...” Cornelia stated, then, as she looked at Elyon, she swore, “Phobos. He won’t just disappear, and we’re going into a new universe...”  
“Yes, not one of my best incidents...” Elyon declared sheepishly, “But we’ll soon be revisiting it, and it will cause a shift in the Guardians which you will not stop, you CANNOT stop...”  
“By doing that ritual with you, We weaved the knowledge of it into your magic...” Will stated, “When the shift happens, you _will_ need those Hearts...”  
Will then left using a walking stick that Elyon literally conjured out of thin air, Elyon following close behind, the revelations over for now.  
“I think the translation is still not right on that prophecy...” Hay-Lin mused, “They made us latch onto something easy, while we missed something obvious...”  
“Oh, do tell...” Cornelia asked, “I just got told my friend for several years won’t be my friend any more...”  
“The Heart Will Begin, The Hearts Will End...” Hay-Lin stated, “Remember, Will said neither of them would be there...”  
“Will keeps telling us to be ready for when she’s not there… Keeps telling us that we’ll need to prepare for a time when the Heart isn’t going to be there...” Cornelia stated, “She made it patiently clear. We’re going to lose access to Will at the same time as Elyon goes traitor...”  
“OK, We confront her with it in the morning. For now...” They agreed, preparing to ask Will why she would betray them in the next timeline...

However, that was not going to be. When they got up, they noticed something wrong immediately, when neither Will nor Elyon came down, heading upstairs and arriving in the bedroom Will was using to see her not breathing, a pale shadow of the woman who had been walking around only a few hours before, Elyon desperately using anything to revive her.  
“Dammit, Will! Wake up!” Elyon snapped, “Stupid, Stupid Will! You used up all your power to keep us all safe… and now you’re gone...”  
Elyon snatched something off the bed, putting it round her neck, before she sighed, and muttered a simple spell which wrapped the body in the bedding, transforming it into a canvas bodybag before she slumped, having used up a lot of power doing so.  
“Will’s dead,” She stated, almost mechanically, sobbing into Cornelia’s top, “Why? Why did she have to die?!?”  
They were surprised when Yan-Lin walked in, looking annoyed at Elyon.  
“Stop with theatrics! Do you think I liked not existing for last two days?!?” Yan-Lin snapped at Elyon, scanning the pendants they’d summoned the day before, “Least she did one thing right. Elyon leader for now, but she know truth... My back room swallowed up entire area round restaurant, thankfully reversed...”  
“Will is not gone, she’s moved onto the restored timeline...” Elyon stated, Yan-Lin nodding.  
“So, What’s happening exactly, and less of the cryptic bullshit...” Hay-Lin sighed, “I don’t have time for it...”  
“You have plenty of time, and none. Pretty much entire of reality unravelling. Veil fell a short time ago, but I not suggest going sightseeing. Magical realms now reality consuming voids...” Yan-Lin stated, “Your former leader shatter Heart of Kandrakar and depleted own magic to lethal levels shoring up this realm so you can learn enough to avoid what happened here...”  
She sighed, rubbing her temples. “By end of day, you’ll wake up at the beginning, but not the beginning...” She continued, pointing to their hearts, “These not diluted, not weakened. Elyon, show them… There’s no risk to you now, world outside doomed already...”  
At that signal, Elyon’s form shifted, her form now similar to how the Guardians looked every time they used their powers, her clothing shifting to fit, her Heart vanishing into her body, leaving just the red pendant that was Will’s powerless Heart. The Guardians followed her lead, thinking of those badass forms they wore when they were using their power, feeling the shift happen, but there was no rush of power. They’d genuinely gained several years of age and were their older selves without their powers.  
“You don’t need to think of your Guardian form of old as an artefact of you harnessing your power...” Elyon stated, her childish pigtails gone and replaced by a french braid, “Well, Ask yourself this… What did Will look like every time except when I was waking her up earlier?”  
“She seemed older, more confid...” Taranee began, “Shit, We didn’t even notice! She was Guardian Will all the time, no issues. When her Heart gave out, she depowered, but until then… No wonder she looked so good despite being in the doldrums! Hell, she’s been looking the bomb for weeks!”  
“So, I can look as hot as this all the time if I wanted to?” Cornelia offered, looking at herself in a mirror.  
“You no longer need to ever go back to normal look, except when someone expect to see normal look...” Yan-Lin stated, “Even then, people easily miss when you’re powered up. Will prove that,”  
“Much better way to hide ourselves...” They agreed, “So, What about our powers?”  
“They are _your_ powers,” Elyon stated, her height dropping by a noticeable margin as she shut off her adult form, before creating a rod, which she quickly used as a crutch, telling them she’d be following Will shortly, “When the time comes, however, you will need to use them to fight, then… It will be awesome.”  
Yan-Lin looked thoughtful, as she considered that the way Elyon used her powers so instinctively without being empowered, visibly, _at all,_ but dismissed it. She’d learn when the time came.  
“So, when you say ‘new timeline’?” Hay-Lin asked, “What exactly do you mean?”  
“Strictly, time stopped before we even went to bed that first night...” Elyon offered, “We’re just going about existing in a dead timeline, since we didn’t want to go, yet… And Will, and later myself, blocked off anything from consuming this house… I’m glad _one_ of you likes Stephen King...”  
“Langoliers...” The other Guardians muttered.  
“It's not the same, but similar. New timeline begin when Will arrive at Heatherfield...” Yan-Lin added, “This time Phobos likely will be very shocked by costumes, yes?”  
Elyon then shifted again, and summoned a replica of Will in her Guardian attire, nothing more than a mannequin, as she changed her attire to match. The Guardians then followed suit, and realised what she meant.  
“Seeing the Guardians Of The Veil walk into the party he’s crashed...” Hay-Lin stated, “Yep, that will cause him to almost have a heart attack...”  
“The age-up and your _original, latent powers_ will be part of you, _that can’t be lost_...” Elyon stated, “I suspect Kandrakar will not be happy though when you find your _new _powers...”  
“We didn’t really find our powers until after you left...” Cornelia offered, for Elyon to give a small smile as she banished the fake Will.  
“Exactly. You didn’t find your powers until _after_ I’d already left...” Elyon stated, “Now, I think we all need to get some sleep...”  
Elyon waited, looking into the other rooms, waiting until they were all asleep, before going into Will’s room.  
“The Hearts Will Begin, The Hearts Shall End. Guardians United, From Beginning To End...” Elyon intoned, before getting into the bed. Later… or would it be earlier, she’d work on that puppy. And persuade Will not to call it Kermit. Or Rowlf. Her heart then flickered and died...

_ **And the world ended...** _


End file.
